Friday, August 29, 2014

So far in the summer of 2014, the temperature in Princeton has reached 90 degrees just three times. Not once has it been above 91.

The forecast is for the weather to get warmer in the next few days, with a chance to reach 90 twice over the weekend and the predicted high to reach 89 two other days.

It makes TigerBlog wonder if the human mind can actually distinguish between 89 and 90. Whenever TB hears of these things these days, he always goes back to what John Nolan, the radio voice of the Fort Wayne Tin Caps, said so profoundly at Jadwin Gym one night last winter about America's obsession with round numbers.

Anyway, TigerBlog will take the under for 90 degrees this weekend. He'll say it'll get no higher than 89 around here.

Certainly this morning there was no reason to suspect that a heat wave was looming. It was another in a series of beautiful, clear, no-humidity, high 50s/low 60s mornings, leading to another beautiful, clear, no-humidity, high 70s/low 80s afternoons. In other words, perfectly perfect, weather-wise at least.

John Bullis is completing his first summer here as Princeton's athletic videographer. He came here in the middle of the last athletic year, from Minneapolis. TB had to explain last winter that it's not usually that cold and snowy here, and now he's had to explain that New Jersey summers have always been famous for their heat and humidity.

As an aside, TigerBlog got an email recently from someone he doesn't know who said that TB seems to be obsessed with TV and the weather. He's not, though he is observant of both.

Anyway, here's another question - would you take a frozen, icy, snowy winter and chilly spring in exchange for an unbelievable summer and fall? That's basically what the last 12 months here have been.

Or would you prefer one of those never-snows, never-gets-too-cold winters if you also had to take a brutally hot and humid summer along with it? TigerBlog isn't sure, but he'd probably deal with the stiffling heat instead of the brutal cold.

Even if the weather looks like it has a chance to heat up a bit, the reality is that the summer is drawing to a close.

In some years, August crawls along. This year, nope. It flew by. TigerBlog can't remember a month that has ever gone as quickly, it would appear.

In fact, shockingly, this is it for August, at least as far as this blog goes. The next time we all get together again, it'll be September.

It'll be Tuesday, Sept. 2, to be exact. Labor Day is Monday, which makes this a long weekend.

Around here, it's the last gameless weekend for awhile.

Next week is game week, the first of the year. Not football game week quite yet, even as the rest of the high school and college football worlds have already kicked it off.

The first Princeton games for 2014-15 are one week from today, when the women's soccer team hosts Rutgers, the men's soccer team is at FDU, the field hockey team is at Duke and the women's volleyball team is at Temple's tournament. The men's water polo team opens its season by hosting the Princeton Invitational a week from tomorrow.

The football season will begin three weeks in the future and 3,000 miles to the west, where the Tigers will play San Diego. The home opener will be Sept. 27 against Davidson.

Kickoff for that game will be at 6, with fireworks to follow after the game. Everyone loves fireworks. Make sure you get there to see them.

TigerBlog would be in favor of an 11th football game and in favor of the Ivy League champion in the FCS playoffs, though not having those doesn't torture him as much as the addition of a basketball tournament would.

What he'd really see like to see is a league-wide off-week halfway through the season, after each team has played five games. It would space out the season a little more, enable it to start a week earlier, give teams a chance to get healthier in midweek.

It would also mean starting camps a week earlier or so, which would increase costs, so he's not 100% sure how it would fly. He just thinks it's a good idea.

In the meantime, it's not really time to focus on all that yet. It's not even Labor Day.

It's still August - though not for long.

It's one last summer Friday. Week after week this summer, it's gotten to be Friday, and TigerBlog has been stunned that another week has come and gone. Is that what happens when you get older?

Thursday, August 28, 2014

TigerBlog likes to drive up Route 206 rather than Route 1 to get from 95 to Princeton, even if it takes slightly longer.

It's not as busy. It's way more scenic. And he likes to drive on Nassau Street, to see the people.

He was most of the way to Nassau Street this morning when he saw two men on bicycles go across 206 and then disappear down a path. One of them was John McPhee, the Pultizer Prize-winning writer and Academic Athletic Fellow for the men's lacrosse team. Mr. McPhee has his 17-mile loop around Princeton; TigerBlog isn't sure what part of the trip he was on at that moment, though he was pedaling pretty well as he zipped away.

Once he got to Nassau Street, he saw two thing that were a bit out of the ordinary.

First, a woman walked across the street - not at one of the crosswalks - and almost walked right into a New Jersey Transit bus. She came from behind a truck that was in line waiting to make a right onto Witherspoon Street and didn't look left or right before simply walking across the busy road.

The bus driver did a nice job of seeing her and braking, probably harder than he would have wanted to. When TB drove past the bus, he could see the driver with a smile on his face, looking back at the passengers, with his arms outstretched, as if to say "what in the world was she doing?"

Had the bus hit the woman, TigerBlog would have stayed there and told the police that it was 100% the fault of the woman. Luckily for everyone, that turned out not to be necessary.

Then, a little further up Nassau, TB found himself behind a Princeton police car at a red light, while in the opposite lane, one car cut another car off as the light turned green. The second car had been in the left turn-only lane and wanted to go straight, so it sped up and cut in front of the other car - right in front of the police car.

TB wasn't sure if the cop was going to get involved or not, and he ended up not. For TB, that one could have gone either way.

It was all part of a typical peaceful Princeton morning. TigerBlog then turned off Nassau and went to the parking lot at Jadwin.

It got him to thinking about the contrast between his office and FatherBlog's. On the one hand, they're separated by about 50 miles or so. On the other, they are different universes.

TigerBlog figures that the distance from where he is sitting to Nassau Street is probably what, a half mile or so? Maybe a little longer?

If he went in a radius of a half-mile from his office, how many people would he run into? A few thousand at most?

FatherBlog's office is in the garment district in New York City. How many people would he run into if he went in a half-mile radius? A quarter of a million maybe?

TigerBlog can only handle New York in small doses. FatherBlog is a New York guy and has been his whole life.

FatherBlog ventured out of his comfort zone yesterday to come down for dinner. This time, he parked in Lot 21 and let TB drive him to the restaurant.

In doing so, he did something that he hasn't done much of in all the years his son has worked at Princeton, and that is come to the campus. TigerBlog can't remember if his father has ever attended a Princeton game here in all that time (he did go to a men's basketball game at Manhattan and a men's lacrosse game at Hofstra).

There is very little overlap between father and son in terms of their worlds. As TB said, his father is a city guy, with interest in city things. The calm and serenity of this campus are a little too slow-paced for him.

It's not a bad thing. It's okay not to have much in common with one's father, and certainly TB isn't going to change him, not as FatherBlog is closing in on 80.

And speaking of closing in on 80, FB still heads to work every day. It's one of three things he loves to do, along with eating and traveling. Still, a year out from 80 and with no signs of ever wanting to stop working, even as he's been doing it about 60 years? That's pretty impressive.

FatherBlog never went to college. He grew up on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Maybe he thought he would never get out of Brooklyn. In fact, it took the U.S. Army to make it happen, and FatherBlog took advantage of being stationed in Europe during the peaceful days between Korea and Vietnam to have his introduction to seeing the world. Since then, there's almost no place he hasn't been: China, Australia, Japan, South America, everywhere in Europe. Maybe next time TB sees his father, he'll ask him to total up the number of countries.

If you're looking for a contrast between father and son, look no further than this: FatherBlog's favorite place is the South of France; TigerBlog loves the Jersey Shore.

FatherBlog called to say he was close to the parking lot, so TB went to keep a eye out for him. By the time he looked out the window, FatherBlog had already stopped three people on his way into Jadwin, two of whom turned out to be head football coach Bob Surace and University Vice President for Campus Life Cynthia Cherrey.

FatherBlog said that he saw that they were wearing Princeton stuff and asked if they knew his son. Of course, he had no idea who they were and what their roles on this campus are.

Surace's dad was his high school football coach, as well as the high school baseball coach. It's the family business.

TigerBlog has no idea when Bob Surace first watched film of a football game with his dad, but his sense is that it was pretty early. TB also suspects that this is more of a rarity than the norm.

Most people probably went in their own directions from their fathers long ago, like TB did.

For one night, though, Princeton University was the common ground between TB and FB, a city guy visiting his decidedly suburban son.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Though TigerBlog has been known to be a tad cynical at times, he's trying to embrace a more optimistic side these days.

It's not always easy.

Today he offers a mix of the cynical and the optimistic, courtesy of the world of sports.

Let's start out with the cynical side.

There was this little tidbit, about the thoughts of some of the current players on a team that is considering signing Richie Incognito, the former Miami Dolphins offensive lineman who was at the center of the Jonathan Martin bullying situation a year ago:Both quarterback Josh McCown and defensive tackle Gerald McCoy said Monday that there wouldn't be a problem in the locker room if Incognito is signed."I don't care. As long as he can help us win, that's all I'm concerned about. If there's a problem, then we'll deal with it accordingly," McCoy said. "But as long as he's doing what he's supposed to be doing in the building, then I'm not concerned about anything else."

So what does that mean? That they could care less about the bullying, only about the blocking. Cynical.

Then there was Jerry Jones, one of the big egomaniacs on this planet. The owner of the Cowboys was talking about Josh Brent and how he hoped how Brent spent some of the off-season helped him in terms of discipline.

And what did Brent do this off-season? He went to jail.

Perhaps you remember Brent from the story in 2012 when he was driving drunk and killed teammate and friend Jerry Brown. And what did Jones say about the matter?

As only outspoken owner Jerry Jones could put it, he hopes Josh Brent can be a better football player when he returns to the Dallas Cowboys because of the time spent in jail for the drunken-driving death of teammate Jerry Brown.
"When you on Monday are given a roll of toilet paper and it's got to
last you until next Monday, that's a lesson of discipline," Jones said
Tuesday in an interview with 105.3 The Fan. "That's a lesson of life.
That's what happened to Josh.
"When you have someone next door to you that grabs your plate of food
and you weigh 340 pounds but you don't mess with him -- he just looks
at you, because you know that guy doesn't care if you live or die --
that's a life experience. I think there's a chance that Josh Brent may
come out here and have a perspective that none of us have seen before,
especially from Josh."

Was that not enough? It gets way, way worse:"He's had that [life-changing] experience," Jones said. "He deserved
that, and some people think he deserved more, but the point is he has
been through some eye-opening days. We could really benefit from that as
a football team."In a totally and completely different way -- and I'm going to make
sure everybody understands it is a completely different way, if you
understand what I'm saying, Chad Hennings joined the
Dallas Cowboys and he had actually flown in Desert Storm single-pilot
jets. Had actually had a crash in single-pilot jets. Chad Hennings had
developed a discipline and developed a work ethic that made him a man
among boys, and he was a major contributor technically [and] physically
but, boy, was he a contributor being an example of work ethic and an
appreciation for the job you've got."It's a shame that all athletes to some degree can't have some of
these life experiences and really have an appreciation for what a great
opportunity it is to play in the National Football League. But Josh has
had that, I think."

What the? So he compares killing someone in a drunk-driving accident with flying jets in combat for the military, essentially saying that the two provide the same kind of "life experiences." And it's a shame that all athletes can't have these "life experiences?"

Is he insane? Seriously? Is there something actually wrong with him?

Cynical.

Then there is the case of USC defensive back Josh Shaw, who suffered two serious ankle injuries from jumping from a second-story hotel balcony to save his seven-year-old nephew from drowning in a pool. For one day, he was hailed as a great hero, and a great USC hero at that, after he acted in the "Trojan Way."

And now? Well, it turns out that it might not exactly be true.

In fairness to Shaw, nothing has been established yet. But hey, why would it turn out to be true? Why wouldn't it be just another charade, designed to make someone feel good about people, only to have it yanked away at the end?

TigerBlog hopes that it turns out that the first story is true. It's just that he'll believe it when he sees it.

Cynical. Very cynical.

And then there was the report about Michael Sam, the first openly-gay player in the NFL, and his shower habits in the lockerroom. Great. Just what this story needed.

Cynical.

On the other hand ...

There is the story of Louis Marx Jr. from the Princeton Class of 1953, who has endowed foreign travel for the men's and women's tennis teams. Every four years (it's an NCAA rule that these trips can be no more frequent than every fourth year), Princeton's men's and women's teams can make a foreign trip courtesy of Marx.

The men's team went to South Africa in June. The women's team is currently finishing its trip to Sweden, Denmark and Spain.

The gift from Marx has enabled nearly a quarter-century's worth of Princeton tennis players to make an international trip. TigerBlog has been on two - both with men's lacrosse - and he can attest first-hand what a great experience it is for the athletes. It's something they will never forget, and it's a huge part of their Princeton athletic careers.

Optimistic. Very much so.

Then there is the preseason national field hockey poll. Princeton is ranked seventh.

A year ago, Princeton reached the NCAA quarterfinals. Two years ago, Princeton won it all, for the first NCAA field hockey title in program history.

This year, Princeton finds itself seventh - as it chases its 20th Ivy League title in 21 years. The Tigers trail Maryland, North Carolina, UConn, Duke, Syracuse and Virginia. That's five ACC teams and the defending champ (UConn).

It's easy to take for granted the overwhelming success of Princeton field hockey, or any Princeton team for that matter. Every now and then it's worth taking a step back and seeing the schools that Princeton competes against year after year, and with such stunning results.

Optimistic.

Then there's Corey Okubo. He'll be a freshman at Princeton this year - just as soon as he returns from the Junior Pan-Pacific Games in Hawaii.

Okubo most recently finished 10th in the 400 IM and 12th in the 200 fly at the U.S. Senior National Championships and from winning 200 fly at the Junior National Championships. Again, it's easy to take for granted that national-caliber athletes like Okubo choose Princeton to compete in college, knowing full well that they do so with an eye on a top education and a top athletic experience.

And they've been doing this for decades and decades.

Optimistic.

Lastly, there is Cosmo Iacavazzi, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and one of the great football players Princeton has ever had. It's been 50 years since he led the Tigers to a perfect season in 1964.

There he was yesterday, talking to this Princeton team after one of its first practices before a season in which the team is the preseason favorite to win the Ivy League title, which it did a year ago as well.

It's about more than wins at Princeton, though. It's about the loyalty and lifelong relationships that are formed as Princeton athletes, and that is on display clearly when someone like Iacavazzi comes back to talk to the current players.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

TigerBlog has finished "Lilyhammer" and is halfway through "Happy Valley" as his Summer of Netflix winds down.

Oh, and one thing about the Emmy Awards: Is that really the best they can do? It's just not funny. And does everyone who won have to act like it's the most shocking thing that's ever happened, something so beyond the pale of their deepest innermost thoughts that they are so absolutely completely stunned speechless that that they won?

Okay, back to Netflix. "Lilyhammer" turned out to be really good, with Season 2 much better than Season 1. "Happy Valley" is only one season of six episodes, of which TB has watched three to date.

It's not about Penn State. It's a British police show, and a really good one. The main character is a policewoman whose daughter committed suicide, and she's on the trail of the man who drove her to do so, unaware that he has conspired with four others in a kidnapping plot. It's a really good show.

So if you're keeping score, TigerBlog has watched 26 episodes of "Orange Is The New Black," 26 episodes of "House Of Cards," 16 episodes of "Lilyhammer" and three of "Happy Valley." That adds up to 71 episodes, which, granted, would put him most of the way through "Breaking Bad," something he hasn't started yet.

One more Emmy note. TigerBlog was rooting against Robin Wright in the Best Actress in a Drama category because her character on "House Of Cards" is such a bitch that TB figured she didn't deserve to win. Now that's a good acting job. It made her worthy of winning, which unfortunately she didn't.

Of course, there's more to life than Netflx. There's football, for instance.

TigerBlog was taking a Netflix respite Saturday when he stumbled upon high school football. He wouldn't have stayed with it long, except that the play-by-play man was Eamon McAnaney, who does a ton of lacrosse. Plus, it was the first "real" football game - as opposed to NFL exhibition games - that he'd seen this year.

Eamon actually said something really funny early on. The color commentator mentioned that the coach of one of the teams gets up at 4 am to go running every day, and Eamon mentioned that the last time he'd been up at 4 am was to catch a plane.

TigerBlog didn't watch much of the high school game. He also didn't watch much of the first "real" college game of the year, Eastern Washington vs. Sam Houston State on Eastern Washington's distinctive red turf.

This game was played Saturday. Eastern Washington won 56-35.

The game was played one day before Princeton's team met for the first time. In fact, it was two days after head coach Bob Surace had his preseason picnic for the football coaches and others, TigerBlog included.

TigerBlog doesn't go to too many events that make him feel better about Princeton Athletics and Princeton University than the picnic that Coach Surace has.

It would be easy for the head football coach to want to be above everyone and everything at a university, let alone an athletic department. After all, isn't that how it works in that profession?

Look around the country at the Power Five conferences and elsewhere. The head coach is a step below God, which still makes him a few steps above anyone else on the campus. The head coach makes millions. The head coach is revered. The head coach in many cases feels he's above the law.

Bob Surace? Hah. Hardly.

He's about as down-to-earth as you can be and still be a college football coach. He doesn't think of himself as above it all. He thinks of himself as a member of a team.

He's completely engaged in Princeton's other teams, in much the same way that John Thompson used to be when he was the men's basketball coach. He stops in daily just to say hello and see what's up. He proves that someone doesn't have to be a jerk to be a football coach, that you don't have to look down on everyone else to be a football coach, that you don't have to be a phony tough guy to be a football coach.

His picnic this year was like his other ones, except that it didn't rain, which TB thinks is a first for the event. Mostly it's just a preseason gathering, the calm before the storm, in his nice - but not ridiculously over the top - backyard, with a bunch of people who all contribute to Princeton football in some way, some big, others small.

It's like going to a block party or a Christmas party at a neighbor's house, the nice neighbor who says "hi, how are you doing, what's new?" and really wants to hear the answer.

If TB had to sum it up in one word, he'd use "warm."

Meanwhile, while the NFL is less than two weeks away from the regular season and the rest of the football world is in game week (college, high school, youth), the Ivy League is just getting going for practice.

This year is a bit different for Princeton, the preseason favorite in the Ivy League. The Tigers come off an 8-2 year that saw them set Ivy records for points and yards in a season.

The lineup has some holes to fill, for sure, but that's the nature of college athletics. Mostly, Princeton has experience and depth, especially on offense. It has the leader of last year's onslaught, quarterback Quinn Epperly.

It has a lot to be excited about as practice gets started. The season is still three weeks away, with the opener in San Diego Sept. 20 and then the home opener against Davidson Sept. 27.

The season will fly by. It always does. In a blink, it'll be mid-October, and the defining moments of the season will be here.

For now, it's the first practices.

And the memory of another picnic at the head coach's house, a head coach who has done more than turn around the fortunes of the football program.

He's proven that you can do that and be a good guy all at the same time.

Monday, August 25, 2014

It's not his usual first choice of a place to eat. He's not a big fan of chain restaurants.

Still, in fairness, it was better than he thought it would be. The salad and breadsticks are the draw, of course, and his meal was pretty good too - a grilled chicken with vegetables and cannellini beans.

Miss TigerBlog wanted to go there to celebrate her recent birthday, and she brought six of her friends with her. TigerBlog was not invited to eat with them, though he was invited to pay the bill.

About the only permissible conversation that TB was allowed to have involved television. One of the girls - Nell - is binge-watching "Grey's Anatomy."

Oh, and the coming of the school year. All seven girls are a few days away from the start of their freshman years of high school, and they have the usual anxiety that would be expected from 14 year old girls who are about to go to high school. You know, what to wear, where to sit for lunch, that sort of stuff.

Nell, a bit more low-key than the average ninth-grade girl, said it's just the next year of education, in an effort to downplay things. Amy, speaking for the rest of the group, said that she was okay with the education but would prefer that it started two hours later each day.

Five of the seven girls are already fall sport athletes, even before their first class. Nell and Amy are field hockey teammates of MTB's, and oh, by the way, in the interest of being factually correct, MTB has scored all three of her team's goals in its two scrimmages.

One subject TB tried to engage them in was the recent success of Mo'ne Davis at the Little League World Series and what if anything they as young female athletes took from it. TB got nothing back from them.

Maybe it's because it's not something they were focused on. Maybe it's because they didn't watch or really care. Maybe they did have strong opinions but didn't really feel like sharing them with TB. Who knows.

TigerBlog is fascinated by the whole Mo'Ne Davis story. First of all, she was a dominant pitcher, that's for sure. Whether she can or wants to continue in baseball is not the point. As a 13-year-old on the Little League level, she was at times untouchable.

And she has great poise. Think about what she became in a short time. She went from just wanting to play baseball to being the biggest story in the country, with her every move chronicled by ESPN and her picture on the cover of "Sports Illustrated."

TigerBlog hates the Little League World Series, precisely because of where all those kids are right now. It's possible that the highlight of all of their lives is already behind them, and it shouldn't be that way when you're 12 or 13.

And TB hates what television does to the event. Year after year, kids who are not ready to handle that kind of spotlight are thrown into and then discarded when their team loses or when it ends, thrown back into the word of middle school, some having to face their classmates after last being seen crying and breaking down on national television after an error or strikeout or a loss.

This year was different though, and it was because of Davis. When TB was in Conte's last week, the game that Davis pitched and lost to Nevada was on the television. The group of late teenagers - mostly males - was watching intently.

So was TB. Maybe not intently, but it was the only part of the LLWS he watched. And it was because of Davis. And he wasn't alone: Davis drew record ratings to ESPN.

And it begged the question - was it because she was a girl?

TB isn't sure.

He's read a lot about the gender issue and Davis, including a column from Sally Jenkins in the Washington Postthat seemed to TB to miss the point of everything and have an incredibly silly thesis. Her point seemed to be "neanderthal men continue to keep women's sports from being relevant," which TB can't disagree with more.

She also wrote about a marathon in Minneapolis in which the top woman finished 45th overall and therefore beat thousands of men, but the men of the world deemed it unworthy to mention that fact, only that she was first among women. Is she trying to say that women should compete directly against men, without any separation by sex? In that case, who would ever care who finished 45th in a marathon?

If anything, it's the separation by sex that makes women athletes relevant, not the other way around. Yes, maybe there are a handful of Mo'nes out there who can compete with their male counterparts head-to-head, but there aren't many.

Niveen Rasheed is one of the most exciting athletes TigerBlog has seen at Princeton. Had there just been one basketball team here, instead of a men's and women's teams, she never would have had the chance to show how exciting she could be.

TigerBlog has never understood the logic that says that women's sports won't be truly accepted until the male audience agrees that the women's athletes are as good as the men's athletes or that women can compete head-to-head with men. Why would that matter in the least?

A column like the one that Jenkins wrote downplays how far women's athletics have come in the last 40 years or so. Go to a Princeton women's basketball game this fall and see for yourself. Count the number of men and boys in the stands.

It tells you how far women's athletics have come in the consciousness of the sporting public. That they're not 100 percent equal with men's sports in terms of national interest? Feminists can drive themselves nuts bemoaning that aspect of it, in much the same way that TigerBlog can tell Major League Baseball fans that lacrosse is a much better sport to watch and not have it matter to them.

If anything, Mo'ne Davis shows how rare it is that a female athlete can compete head-to-head and beat her male counterparts, and that's a big part of why it became such an event. But so what.

It's not about that. It's about opportunity.

There are so many women athletes who didn't have the opportunities that MTB and her friends take for granted, and the ones who competed here decades ago who paved the way for the girls who play today are real heroes.

TigerBlog was at MTB's scrimmage the other day. The game was scoreless in the second half, and the play was down in front of her team's goal. Someone whacked in down the field, and MTB outran two defenders on the other team to get to the ball first. She pushed it ahead a few times and got it into the circle. Then she drove it past the goalie, with the resulting crack of the field hockey ball against the back of the cage.

It required speed, coordination, strength and determination to pull it off. Does it matter that boys her age are faster and stronger? Not in the least.

TB has watched way more girls' and women's sports than most people - probably, he'd guess, than Sally Jenkins even. You know what's missing from them?

Nothing.

If Mo'ne Davis is better than most boys her age, that's great. If a small percentage of women's athletes are the same, great.

It doesn't take anything away from the rest of them that they're not, anymore than it takes away from the fact that more people watch baseball than men's lacrosse.

Friday, August 22, 2014

In the entire history of Princeton Athletics, how many people have been a head coach for at least 20 seasons? What would you guess?

It turns out the answer is 24, including two – Richard Vaughan and Jimmy Reed – who coached at least 20 seasons with two different teams. Or so TigerBlog thinks, assuming that the same Richard Vaughan coached hockey and sprint football and the same Jimmy Reed coached soccer and wrestling.

Princeton will have a 25th coach and seventh active coach join that list, but she will go no further than 20 seasons here. Julie Shackford, the women’s soccer coach, announced today that the 2014 season at Princeton will be her 20th and final one.

Shackford is 196-106-26 in her first 19 seasons at Princeton, so she obviously needs four wins to reach 200. The next-best total by a Princeton soccer coach is 136, by Reed, who spent 29 seasons coaching the men’s team. Shackford is 238-130-30 overall with her four years as the head coach at Carnegie Mellon added in.

Her resume also includes six Ivy League titles and eight NCAA tournament appearances, the most by an Ivy women’s soccer coach. She is one of two Ivy coaches to go 7-0-0 in women’s soccer twice, something she did in 2004 and 2012.

Speaking of 2004, she did something that year that no other Ivy women’s soccer coach has ever matched, taking Princeton all the way to the NCAA Final Four. In fact, it’s the only time an Ivy League team has reached the Final Four of a 64-team NCAA tournament.On the day that she announces her retirement, TigerBlog turned to Emily Behncke, a two-time first-team All-Ivy League selection, the 2005 Ivy Player of the Year and one of the stars of the 2004 Final Four team, to talk about her head coach, whom her players almost exclusively call "Shacks":

It's impossible to express in just a few words the profound impact Shacks has made on the Princeton soccer program.

It’s easy to start with the six Ivy League championships, eight NCAA appearances, and magical Final Four run of 2004, but her impact goes far beyond the soccer field.

My memories of Shacks go back nearly 20 years, from those first games I watched as a middle schooler when my brothers were on the men’s soccer team, to my own years playing at Princeton, to her continued success with the program that I’ve witnessed as an alum.

What stands out most for me – and what I believe will be her lasting legacy for the hundreds of players who played for her during her 20 years as head of the Princeton women’s soccer program – is her passion for her players' success. Shacks cares deeply for each of her players, and more than anything, is driven to help them realize and achieve their full potential.

She doesn’t back away from some tough love to help her players achieve that goal. For me personally, that led to some seriously sore biceps as a freshman.

But it’s because of Shacks and what she grew that I was able to compete in a Final Four, play professionally in Sweden, and, most importantly, be a part of program that remains almost as much a part of my life now as it was during my four years on campus.

When her players walk off Myslik Field for the last time as graduating seniors, chances are they will have experienced many memorable nights, captured an Ivy League title, and played in the NCAA tournament. But what is most important to Shacks is the progress each player has made throughout her career and the fact that her players can graduate proud of their contributions to the program, without any regrets.

And although she demands a lot from her players, Shacks constantly finds creative ways to keep things fun.

Our beloved “PGGs” (Pre-Game-Games) got so competitive she frequently had to cut them off so we wouldn’t wipe ourselves out before the actual league game. Blue/White challenges during practice drew some of the fiercest one-on-one battles I’ve seen in college soccer. “Phantom Menace” pranks amongst the team were encouraged, even though they were largely aimed at the coaching staff.

And we all still talk about who’s earned the “yellow jersey” – an initiative she implemented after getting swept up in the Tour de France excitement one year. She really lives her mantra, “it doesn’t get any better than this” and she made us all believe it. Even after long bus rides home from away games or cold November practices in the rain, we all still felt fortunate to be there, to be part of something that special.

I now spend more time behind a desk than running around a field, but the lessons I learned from her during my four years at Princeton remain surprisingly relevant.

Whether you’re nervous about a pre-season run test or your first client presentation, it’s important to remember, "You'll pass out before you die." If you find yourself in a tough game against Harvard with an unforgiving referee or you’re negotiating a new deal, “expect the unexpected.” Have patience – it will all come "in due time."

And most importantly, whatever stage of life you’re in, "it doesn't get any better than this."

Shacks has amassed many accolades during her coaching career, most notably as 2004 Division I Coach of the Year. And although she rarely spoke of her own glory days, she has just as many success stories from her playing days at William & Mary, where she was a three-time All America.

As impressive as those stats are they don’t show the impact she’s had on the hundreds of players she’s coached over the past 19 seasons at Princeton. Despite all of the games her team won, the individual rewards she received, and the six Ivy League championships she won, her lasting legacy to the program and the community will always be that she helped every one of the young women who played for her identify their full potential and continue to strive to realize that potential long after they left the comfort, friendship, and family that she created at Princeton.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

TigerBlog remembers when he went to college for the first time. As he moved his stuff into his dorm - Class of 1928 in the Quad - he heard FatherBlog utter the most sage words he's ever heard from the old man: "When you get hungry enough, you'll figure out where the dining hall is."

Zach is moving into Hill House, which is at 33rd and Walnut, as opposed to the Quad, which stretched about four blocks up Spruce Street, a few blocks up from Franklin Field and the hospital.

Zach is a Princeton High School grad who spent a PG year at the Hun School. Now he'll play sprint football at Penn, and he is listed as a QB/WR/DB on the roster. In reality, sprint football players can play anywhere, since they're all about the same size. It's the whole point of sprint football. Maybe Zach will end up on the offensive line.

He'll be back in Mercer County on Halloween night, when Penn plays at Princeton in the final game of the sprint football season. Princeton is in its first season with Sean Morey as its head coach, and TB can't wait to see if this might just be the year the Tigers get that elusive win.

As for Zach, he's TigerBlog's favorite kind of kid, or young adult, or adult, or whatever kids his age are.

He calls TB by his first name, but not in a disrespectful way. He fits in naturally in a group of people his age, but he can also fit in with the group of parents too, without coming across as a suck-up or phony.

He laughs at all the right times. He speaks enough to let you know he's comfortable making his point but not too much that he becomes a pompous know-it-all, like a lot late teenagers do. He has a strong handshake, and he looks adults right in the eyes.

And he's going to Penn, so you know he also has a brain in his head.

Last night was something of a going away part for him, at Conte's, on Witherspoon Street. TigerBlog usually likes thicker crust pizza, but Contes is a Princeton institution and a special place.

Conte's for years was TB's post-men's basketball game destination, largely because it was Pete Carril's and Bill Carmody's and Joe Scott's and John Thompson's and Howard Levy's and of course Marv Bressler's. The conversations there? They were classics, epics, ones where TB mostly listened and learned.

And so it was worth the 45-minute wait or however long it was last night before a table at Conte's was ready. Actually, it was two tables, of 11 each - one for the 11 adults and one of the 11 whatever-they-ares, who ranged in age from 14-19.

Howard Levy was there. He was in charge, actually. He and Digger, Steve DiGregorio that is, Zach's father. Digger is a former assistant football coach at Princeton, and he was something of the host, moving from group to group during the wait to sit and then between the tables to make sure everyone was having a good time or had enough pizza.

But Howard was in charge. He always seems to be in charge of whatever it is that is going on around him. It's an innate quality, TB supposes.

Howard is a 1985 Princeton grad and the all-time leader in field goal percentage for the Tigers' men's basketball team. He was an assistant coach under Carmody, Thompson and Scott during their head coaching days here, and he's now the head coach at Mercer County Community College.

At Princeton, he played with and coached people who were destined for college regardless of whether or not they were good at basketball. They measured success by championships won, NCAA tournaments, that sort of thing. TB can still hear Carril's voice booming in the background, yelling at his team that "we're trying to win the title here fellas."

At MCCC, Howard is still trying to win. It's just that his voice was most proud when he talked about the guys - if you're a Carril disciple, you say "guys" instead of "players" or "young men" or whatever else anyone says - who have played for him and then gone on to graduate from a four-year school. His offer is a steak dinner to all those who do, and this summer he was on the hook for four such steaks.

Because he was in charge, Howard made sure the tables were split up properly. He ordered the pizzas while everyone was waiting. He surveyed what everyone wanted on their pizzas (TB's favorites there are either peppers and onions or mushrooms).

His son Lior was there. He'll be a sophomore at Franklin & Marshall, on the basketball team. He's a RA this year, and apparently is living in a dorm room that rivals a four-star hotel room.

There were 11 kids in all, including TigerBlog Jr. and Miss TigerBlog. TBJ was a ballboy with Zach and Lior for Princeton basketball a long, long time ago.

Zach's brother Derek, who just turned 17, was there. He was standing and walking, which was great to see, as he continues his fight against Ataxia Telangiectasia, a rare disease that has attacked his body - but not his spirit - since he was a baby. Nadia DiGregorio, their mother, said that Derek had read "Jane Eyre" and, when asked by the teacher to comment, said something along the lines of "she had a terrible life and I have a great one, so I can't relate to her."

Courage? He has a ton of it.

Someone brought a friend that TB had never before. He goes to Yale. TB shook his hands and said "at least it's better than Harvard," though he would have said the opposite if the kid had said he went to school in Cambridge.

Alex Deutsch was there - he is off to Middlebury to play baseball. He and his parents are Ted and Jess, both from the Class of 1991. That's the same class as Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux; Jess was struck by the fact that the AD is now her age, as opposed to 24 years older than she is, like the previous one.

Jess lettered in tennis as an undergrad. Ted played baseball here. He was wearing baseball pants and had to leave for a softball game, but he stayed past when the game started.

It was that kind of night. A fun, nice, relaxing night. A night where waiting 45 minutes for a table or being a little late for a softball game was just fine.

The kids at the next table?

It dawned on TigerBlog at some point that he'd seen most of them grow up literally from the day they were born. They went to nursery school together. They were ballboys in this buildling. They had spent summers together at Dillon camp. They saw each other at countless athletic events here.

They've grown up, that's for sure. None of them are little kids anymore. Of the 11, TB thinks five can drive now. They're not the little kids they used to be - and not just because Lior stands 6-7 or Zach is playing sprint football in college.

What dawned on TB ultimately was that it was, again, a reflection of what a special place Princeton University is. All of these people were brought together here, and all have been touched by this University, had it affect them directly, had it shape them in so many ways, had their children benefit from it.

That's what these 20-plus years have been about for TB.

Yes, as Coach Carril said so many times, "we're trying to win the title, fellas."

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

The first scene of "Top Gun" includes the moment where Maverick and Goose invert their F-14 above a Soviet MiG at a rather close distance.

The two American pilots take a Polaroid (remember those? They were completely wiped out by camera phones) and give an different kind of salute to the rival pilots and then fly away.

Later on, when they're at Top Gun school in California, they relate the experience to the instructor - with whom Mav sort of predictably falls in love - though they fall all over their words to explain the nature of their salute.

Apparently there was no ambiguity to that same salute when it came from Johnny Manziel Monday night, when the Browns played the Redskin. Manziel, in Goose's words, flipped the bird to the Skins.

Raise your hand if you're shocked that he did that.

Anyway, it led to this great first paragraph on the ESPN.com story:Johnny Manziel raised his middle finger toward the Washington Redskins bench as he returned to the huddle late in the third quarter. It was one of the few times a Cleveland Browns quarterback actually found his intended target.

Now that's really good.

You want more really good writing? Let's go back to October 1939, after Princeton defeated Brown in football 26-12. This is from the Daily Princetonian:A docile Bruin squatted on his hams and let a sure-footed Tiger pummel him for most of their four-round bout Saturday afternoon. Pluck, wind and a woeful Princeton pass defense enabled him to register 12 points to Princeton's 26. When Bob Peters took the ball on the first formation and loped 67 yards to the paydirt in the year's most beautifully synchronized pay, many of Palmer Stadium's 15,000 spectators expected the Tigers to stage a wholesale Bear slaughter for the balance of the game.

How great is that?

Early sportswriting was nothing like what it would become. It was flowery, in many cases poetry.

Take "Casey At The Bat," a famous story about the Mudville Nine, which is what baseball teams used to be called.

As an aside, when the Trenton Thunder first became a Minor League team, TigerBlog's colleague at the Trenton Times Mark Eckel used to refer to them as "The Local Nine."

A few decades (four of them, to be precise) after "Casey At The Bat," Grantland Rice wrote this after a Notre Dame football game, in 1924:Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again.
In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and
death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher,
Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend
cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the
precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered
down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain
below.

Hey, he's no Mark Eckel, but that's not too shabby either.

Fast forward to today. TigerBlog gets chills reading what Rice wrote about a college football game, still, 90 years after the fact.

But do people want to read that sort of stuff again today?

What Rice wrote is 489 characters. That's more than three tweets. Who has patience to read that much today?

Suppose you oversaw a college athletic website. What would you think would be a priority for your readers?

Long, well-written postgame stories, with quotes and all? Or some bullet point facts about the game? Or an info-graphic? Or maybe just video highlights? Or something else completely?

TigerBlog has asked this question a million times before, and it's applicable again right now. What do people want to read?

He brought this up to a few of his colleagues and got complete, 180 degree different answers.

His question is simple: When was the last time you read a real postgame story? Do you already know everything that happened in the game from twitter or someplace else, so you don't really need that kind of in-depth recap?

Is it just a matter of providing a few tidbits about a game and them moving on to the next event?

TB isn't sure. He likes the challenge of writing a really good postgame story, but he doesn't want to invest time into something that is out of date.

So what's the answer?

He's still not sure.

Maybe the decline of newspapers hasn't been as much an economic thing as a reaction to the fact that people just don't want to read like they used to. Maybe the market for traditional sportswriting has dried up.

TigerBlog hopes not. He started out in newspapers. He writes this blog every day.

But he's a pragmatist. He'd yield to the wills of the audience - if only he knew how to figure out what those whims were.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

This record shows how meaningless the preseason is. The Giants haven't exactly lit it up with their first team players and instead of have relied on exciting - if not quite significant - comebacks to win all three times. Undrafted free agent wide receiver Corey Washington, from Newberry College, has caught the game-winning TD pass in all three games.

Of course, Washington isn't listed as a starter. In fact, he's hardly a lock to actually make the team, as he is listed as a fourth-string receiver, which explains why he's in the game at the end to catch the game-winning passes.

TigerBlog watched the end of the Giants-Colts game the other night. It was 26-0 Indianapolis when TB put the game on; the Giants won 27-26. Had this been a regular-season game, it would have been an epic comeback, an all-time comeback.

Instead, it was a bunch of guys trying to make the team.

Eli Manning - TigerBlog's favorite current pro athlete who did not go to Princeton and a two-time Super Bowl MVP - went 1 for 7 for six yards. Ryan Nassib, who has no chance of starting over Manning, went 11 for 15 for 158 yards and the game-winner to Washington.

When the game ended, it dawned on TigerBlog that he had watched more football than baseball since the start of the 2014 baseball season.

Seriously. He'd watched less than one quarter of one preseason football game, and that was more time spent watching football than baseball.

Thinking back to the 2013 baseball postseason, TB hardly watched any of it, and he can't remember watching any of the World Series.

There was a time he'd watch the Atlanta Braves on TBS pretty much every night. Then TBS went away from showing Braves games, and TB got more into lacrosse anyway. Lax? He's watched lots of it on TV.

Had you told TigerBlog 25 years ago that he would watch way more lacrosse and soccer on TV than baseball in a summer, he wouldn't have believed it.

TigerBlog hadn't even checked the Major League standings all season until last week. And what did he find?

The Kansas City Royals are in first place? How did that happen? And the Orioles are 7.5 games in front in the AL East? Again, who knew?

TigerBlog doesn't really have a favorite baseball team. He prefers rooting against the Yankees. He figured the Yankees were right in the thick of it, but it's not looking good for them in Derek Jeter's last season, as they are unlikely to catch the O's and are in fourth place in the wildcard race, three games back of three teams - the A's, the Tigers and the very surprising Mariners.

TigerBlog is all on board the Mariners' bandwagon now. For starters, BrotherBlog lives in Seattle, and TB went to a Mariners' game last summer when he was there.

Actually, all pictures of Young are basically the same. He has the same exact look on his face, with his lips tightly pressed together and all of his muscles straining on each pitch. He looks like he just jumped out of an airplane or something like that.

Young is having a great season with the Mariners, and this on the heels of a nightmarish stretch that saw him have 2012 wiped out by injury and 2013 spent in the minors.

After shutting out the Tigers for six innings Sunday, Young is 12-6 on the year for the Mariners, who are 67-57, largely because of their great pitching. The story on Grantland details Young's resurgence largely in the context of sabermetrics, which TigerBlog both understands and doesn't really love.

Yes, they are great predictors of success, way more than the traditional stats. Yes, a team would have be dumb not to embrace them.

No, TigerBlog doesn't love what they've done to sports, which will never be as cut-and-dry as a math test, where it's either right or wrong. Much of the beauty of sport is the intangible side, which can't be measured in advanced analytics.

Still, TB admits they do a pretty good job of explaining the success of a 6-10 pitcher who can barely break 85 on the gun. That 6-10 pitcher used to play basketball and baseball at Princeton, and he remains one of TB's all-time favorites to ever wear orange and black.

Actually, TB's belief is that Young is pretty much every Princeton fan's favorite. There haven't been too many athletes who have come through here who seemed to be as well-liked as Young.

One of the most startling things in the story on Grantland was that Young is 35 years old. How is that possible?

When TB thinks of Chris Young, he'll always think of what might have been had he competed his final two seasons, instead of signing a professional baseball contract. And first, he'll think of the time Young put a very, very small TigerBlog Jr. on his shoulders on the side court at Jadwin so TBJ could dunk.

Young has had a very successful career in Major League Baseball. The Grantland story suggests that he's a leading contender for the AL Comeback Player of the Year Award.

And, of course, he's a major reason why his team is in the thick of the wildcard race.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Her best friend, Wiki, made her a card. It said on the front: "She is my best friend. If you break her heart, I will break your face." That's Wiki in a nutshell.

Actually, TigerBlog took it as a big victory when MTB told him that, when he takes her and five of her friends out to eat to celebrate, he will actually be permitted to eat in the same restaurant - though clearly at a different table. This was a change from the original proclamation that he would not be permitted in the same restaurant and would have to find someplace else to eat, though someplace close, since he needed to provide 1) transportation and 2) financing for their meal.

Speaking of MTB and Wiki, TigerBlog recently found an old box filled with pictures. There were some in the box that dated back to when he was a kid even. He had great hair back then. Oh well.

Mostly, there are pictures of TigerBlog Jr. and Miss TigerBlog. Year after year, birthday and birthday, there is MTB - and there is Wiki next to her, in every single picture.

There are more pictures of MTB and Wiki than there are of any other combination of people. There they are, at the pool, both on their chaise lounges, both wearing their shades. There they are, no more than four or five years old, hugging each other while playing some sort of dress up game. There they are, on the first day of school last year at the bus stop.

In fact, there's a picture of them at the bus stop every year, starting in kindergarten and running until this past year. There won't be one of them this year, as they are going their separate ways for high school at least, as MTB will be going to the public school while Wiki will be going to a Catholic school.

They'll still be neighbors, and presumably - hopefully, actually - best friends.

TigerBlog Jr. had three best friends when he left middle school. He then went to a private high school, while the other three went to the same public high school that MTB will be going to. Now, three years later, TBJ is still best friends with one of the three - but hasn't really stayed in touch with the other two.

When TigerBlog got to high school, it was mostly all the same kids he had been with since kindergarten. In MTB's case, her high school feeds from three middle schools, which feed from 12 elementary schools.

In other words, when she went to middle school, she was with kids from four different elementary schools, which means that she had never gone to school with three-quarters of those kids before. Now as she goes to high school, she will be with kids who come from three middle schools, which means that she will never have gone to school before with two-thirds of the kids in her class.

Oh, and her class has about 950 kids in it.

One of the best ways to bridge the gap of unfamiliarity is with through athletics. In MTB's case, she tried out for the field hockey team last week and made it, giving her a leg up before she ever walks into the school.

In fact, her intro to high school was making that team, and it came two weeks before school even starts. TB is pretty sure it'll be helpful to her as she makes the transition into a world of the unknown.

The same applies even more so in college athletics.

A little later this week, the Princeton campus will be flooded with fall athletes, whose return for preseason practice will be Act 1 for the 2014-15 athletic year here. Princeton will go from quiet to busy in no time at all.

The first day of classes here is Wed., Sept. 10. That's still more than three weeks away.

By then, Princeton will be well on its way athletically.

For the incoming freshmen (Class of 2018, wow), the transition to Princeton life is made considerably easier by reporting now and then practicing and ultimately competing.

The athletic side is easier, because there is no schoolwork to make the adjustment to quite yet. So that goes without saying.

It's the other side of it though that is really helpful. At least in MTB's case, all of the kids in her high school class are from the same few towns.

In the case of Princeton athletics, they come from all over.

Take the men's soccer team for instance. There are six freshmen on the men's soccer roster right now. They come from: New Jersey (two of them), Michigan, Arizona, Illinois and New Zealand.

As an aside, it'll be hard for Daniel Bowkett to be Princeton's best athlete from New Zealand, the same country that brought NCAA hammer throw champion Julia Ratcliffe here.

Anyway, having the bond of being teammates is huge. It provides an immediate sense of belonging and gives all of them a foundation here. It's one of the biggest benefits of playing college athletics.

Then there's the other part of it. That's the part where they come back 50 years from now and talk about how they've been best friends all these decades and still remember the first day they met, how they came together on a field at Princeton.

Friday, August 15, 2014

TigerBlog opened the door this morning and was greeted by a preview of autumn.

The temperature was below 60, actually all the way down to 55, according to his phone. It was crystal clear, with almost no humidity.

You call this August in New Jersey? It felt more like late September, maybe even early October.

This has been a rare summer in these parts, in that it's never really gotten to be oppressively hot and humid or anything like that. Only three times this summer has the temperature reached 90 degrees, and the high for the season has only been 91.

Contrast that with last summer, when there were about a million days when it was at least 90, with accompanying humidity of course. TigerBlog is used to that, since he's basically had that for every summer of his life.

This one has been different though.

It's been mostly in the low 80s during the days and into the 60s at night. It's been, well, pleasant.

TigerBlog read a story about all this last week, though he can't remember where. It said that there is unlikely to be a heat wave - defined as three consecutive days with temps in the 90s - this summer, which would mark the first time in a decade that there would be no heat wave in this area.

As for August, it's half over already, which, given what TB wrote two weeks ago, would suggest that August flies by, rather than crawls, especially when the weather is like this.

If you're looking for other signs of fall, they're everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.

Miss TigerBlog is one full week into high school field hockey practice - TB can report that she made the team. When TB goes to either pick her up or drop her off, he sees every other fall team at the school in its first week of practice as well.

Beyond that, every park that TB drives by seems to have Pop Warner football practice, or soccer or something else.

The preseason has begun in the NFL - Caraun Reid had two tackles for loss last week for Detroit - and TV is also dominated by talk of the soon-to-arrive college football season.

Ah, but at Princeton? Not quite yet.

There is still a calmness on campus. The last of the summer camps has been wrapping up, and the wave of fall athletes has yet to arrive.

That all changes within a week. By next Friday, Princeton's campus will be flooded with athletes, team and practices. And it'll be the surest sign that fall is right around the corner.

TigerBlog has been counting down the weeks until the first day of competition for the 2014-15 academic year.

Today that countdown stands at three weeks. Just three short weeks between now and the first athletic events of 2014-15.

Coming up on Sept. 5 - 21 days from today - there will be field hockey at Duke, men's soccer at FDU, women's volleyball at Temple's tournament against Charlotte and Holy Cross and the first home event of the year, a women's soccer game against Rutgers.

Actually, that will be the fourth game of the year for the Scarlet Knights, who open their season one week from today against Stony Brook. RU also plays Vanderbilt and Seton Hall at home before its game here against the Tigers.

There are nine more events scheduled between Saturday, Sept. 6, and Wednesday, Sept. 10, including another home women's soccer game (Seton Hall) and a home men's soccer game (St. John's). There's also the men's water polo team's Princeton Invitational.

All of these teams report next week and start practicing. The football team and sprint football team also begin shortly, with opening day of the football season five weeks and three time zones away.

So what does all this mean?

It means that the weeks continue to zoom by. Can it really be Friday again? Can August really be half over? It just began.

It also means that today is the last Friday of the summer here before the athletic department roars back to life. And it's a perfect Friday at that, another completely pleasant day, one that is going to start another completely pleasant weekend.

So go outside. If nothing else, go for a nice walk somewhere. Anywhere.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

When TigerBlog has to write an essay on the first day of school about how he spent his summer vacation, he can probably sum most of it up in two words: Watched Netflix.

Actually, TigerBlog can't remember too many times, if any actually, where he was asked to write about his summer vacation on the first day of a new school year. Maybe at Penn, before finger-painting. That's how education is at Penn, right all you Princeton people?

Seriously, TB can't remember being asked to do write about summer vacation. He probably was at some point. He doesn't really remember much of second grade or third grade or anything like that.

TigerBlog went to a bunch of different schools between first grade and high school, as opposed to his own children, who will have gone to one elementary school for K-5, one middle school for 6-8 and then one high school (though different high schools from each other).

TB went to one school for first and second grades, another for third, yet another for fourth and then a different one for fifth and sixth. Then it was two years at the junior high school and four years at high school. That's six schools in 12 years, as opposed to three for his kids.

And that was all without ever moving out of his house. It was all with the same kids in the same school district the entire 12 years. It's just that there were a lot of buildings used.

TB used to think this was normal; in fact, he's guessing most people didn't do it that way.

Once that show was over, TB immediately started on "House of Cards," and he polished off all 26 episodes of that show in no time as well. Actually, he thinks that he went through "House of Cards" in fewer days than "OITNB."

If you've "binge-watched," you know what it's like. One episode ends, and you immediately want to watch another one. And then you look at the clock when that one's over and say "it's not too late; one more." The next thing you know, it's midnight, and you've spent four hours watching a show. And want to keep going.

"House of Cards" might be better than "Orange Is The New Black," but they're both outstanding. They're very different subjects, but they are both well-written and well-acted with great, great characters. And they both mix in humor with their serious foundations, though TB would hardly call either a comedy.

"House of Cards" is nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, four more than "OITNB."

If you don't know anything about "House of Cards," it's the story of Frank Underwood, the majority whip of the House of Representatives (at least in Episode 1; TB won't spoil what happens for you). The whips in the house responsible for keeping the party members in line and getting them to vote the way the party wants, usually with the need to exchange favors - or threats - to get compliance.

Underwood is played by Kevin Spacey, who is about as good in this role as Claire Danes is as Carrie Matheson in "Homeland," which means extraordinarily-over-the-top great. The entire cast is tremendous, with one great character after enough - the same kind of great supporting cast that "OITNB" has.

Rather than give away the plot, TB will simply say that the entire season makes him wonder how much of this is accurate portrayal of how the U.S. government works at its highest levels.

And to recommend that you get Netflix and start watching.

As with all binge-watching, the problem now is what show to watch next. He's thinking about "Breaking Bad," but he's not sure he has 85 episodes in him. On the other hand, that won't take him very long, given the way binge-watching works.

He watched the first episode of "Lilyhammer," another Netflix original series. This one stars Steven Van Zandt as a mob guy-turned-informer who gets sent to the Norwegian town (spelled "Lillehammer;" the title of the show is changed on purpose because of the name of Van Zandt's character's dog).

It seems like it would be right in TB's wheelhouse. Van Zandt sort of plays Silvio Dante from "The Sopranos" again, and it's more funny than serious. He fell asleep during Episode 1, but he may have to give it another go.

There are big lessons to be learned from Netflix and binge-watching about the evolution of viewing habits, and there are takeaways for Princeton Athletics.

First of all, Netflix released all 13 episodes of each season of "OITNB" and "House of Cards" at the same time, as opposed to one per week. It's like the shows were on Sunday at 9 or Tuesday at 10. They were just there - just like Season 3 will be, though not for awhile for either.

Second, TigerBlog watched some of the episodes on his TV, some on his computer and some on his phone. If he had a tablet, he could have used that too.

In other words, there's a lot of content out there, and it's accessible anywhere, not just on TV.

Since TigerBlog's first day here more than 20 years ago, television has always been a huge priority. Get games on TV. Any TV. A TV camera = good. No TV camera = bad.

That is changing rapidly.

TB still thinks that there is great value in television, especially Princeton's agreement with ESPN. It's perfect for Princeton, with a chance to put a minimum of seven events per year on an ESPN network, with the huge distribution that comes with it.

The other great part about that is that most of those events are on the WatchESPN app, which takes them from TV only to the mobile world, which is what people really want these days.

That's why the Ivy League Digital Network is such a great idea. Watch anywhere you are.

Unlike a TV show, live athletic events are meant to be seen live, though people do watch archived versions, though not in great numbers. The ability to provide streams to the target audience on their phones, tablets and computers is huge.

The problem is what do you do when the choice is streaming or television, because not all TV broadcasts can be streamed. In fact, most can't be.

What about networks that don't have the reach that ESPN does? If you a huge Princeton fan, would you rather have a game on TV on a network that you may or may not have or the ability to watch it on your phone wherever you are?

The flip side is that you have actually go to the Ivy League Digital Network. Non-Ivy League fans probably aren't going to be doing that, though they might stumble onto a game on television and be intrigued.

It's quite the issue these days. Keep in mind, the ILDN is not cheap for the eight schools and the league, and significant resources continue to be invested in the name of improving the product.

TB doesn't think the league is quite to the point where it doesn't need TV at all. On the other hand, building the ILDN should be a highest priority.

After all, it's the future. It's important to think in the long term and how to get there. The long-term is definitely producing as much original live content as possible. There's no doubt about that. It's what people want.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

TigerBlog saw the title of the show and figured it had to be about Princeton Athletics, no?

"Orange Is The New Black?" What else could it possibly be about?

Naturally he wanted to watch it. He wouldn't have felt the same way if the show as called "Red Is The New Blue" or "Crimson Is The New Black" or even "Carnelian Red Is The New White."

So "Orange Is The New Black" it was.

Guess what. It's not about Princeton Athletics at all.

Just to be sure, TigerBlog watched all 13 episodes of Season 1 and then all 13 episodes of Season 2 - all in less than a two-week span. And there wasn't a single Princeton reference to be found.

"OITNB" is actually based on a true story, though it's apparently a far cry from the book. It's the story of Piper Kerman, who spent a year in a minimum security prison for having been a really small part of an international drug operation.

The show is an original series on Netflix. TigerBlog binge-watched, as they say, even checking out the last 10 minutes of the last show of Season 1 on his phone on a lacrosse field at the University of Delaware, prior to a game for TigerBlog Jr.

That's how addicting it is.

The show is really, really good. Yeah, the premise can be summed up as "come to prison; it's not really that bad; you can make some new friends and have some laughs." And for some reason, it's considered a comedy for the upcoming Emmy Awards, for which the show received nine nominations.

The main character is still named Piper, though her fictionalized last name is Chapman. Her sentence is 15 months, and the first two seasons span about half of that time.

It has its funny moments, but TigerBlog wouldn't consider it a comedy. No, it mostly shows that prison, while it might have its lighter moments, is about loss of freedom, fear, loss of identity, loss of self.

As Red said in "The Shawshank Redemption," it's "a whole life blown away in the blink of an eye, with nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it."

Some of the women in "OITNB" are lifers. Others are like Piper, in prison for much shorter periods. The question is what will be different when they get out to make sure they don't come right back.

Piper had all the advantages that many of the women she meets didn't - education, money, stable family. And yet she ended up in the same place.

What makes the show great is the character development. "Orange Is The New Black" employs a pretty good vehicle for going behind the scenes with its characters, using flashbacks to their lives on the outside to show how they ended up in prison.

And some of the characters are just outstanding, in terms of the way they're written and the way they're acted. This applies to the inmates and to the staff, and at certain points it becomes hard to remember who has the moral superiority and stronger character between the two.

The show is really well done. TB isn't sure how Netflix got into the business of producing original content, but his sense is it came out of the company's evolution from a DVD mail-order distributor to a cutting edge, modernized operation that figured out what the TV-watching public wants in 2014.

This was TB's first Netflix original series experience, and it was tremendous. Even without any references to Princeton. Nothing about Princeton's school colors, how they became Princeton's school colors. None of it.

TigerBlog was pretty sure he knew the story of how Princeton adopted orange and black as its colors.

It started when Princeton first started to field athletic teams, which goes back to baseball in 1864 and of course the first football game, against Rutgers in 1869.

Somewhere along the line, the color orange was introduced as a tribute to William of the House of Nassau, for whom Nassau Hall was named and who was also the Prince of Orange. Eventually, black was added to orange.

When stripes were brought into the picture, a newspaper account referred to how Princeton fought like Tigers. Simple, no?

It's really good stuff, and if you close your eyes, you can sort of picture how it all unfolded and imagine the world of Princeton University and Princeton Athletics in the 1870s and 1880s:

Princeton's orange and black came into use soon after the Civil War. On
April 5, 1866, a freshman named George K. Ward 1869 observed at a class
meeting that many other colleges had their distinctive colors but
Princeton had none, and he suggested that orange would be appropriate
since William III of the House of Nassau, in whose honor the first
building had been named, was also Prince of Orange. His suggestion met
with instant favor with his classmates but failed to win general
approval in the other classes. Ward persisted, however, and a little
over a year later, on June 26, 1867, when his teammates in the Class of
1869 Base Ball Club assembled at Princeton Junction for their trip to
New Haven to play the Yale Class of 1869, he provided them all with
badges of orange ribbon with ``'69 B.B.C.'' printed on them in black
ink. It proved an auspicious occasion for the first recorded use of
Princeton's colors. Sporting their badges, the team had a pleasant trip
by train to New York and overnight on the steamer ``Elm City'' up Long
Island Sound to New Haven; heard a speech by President Andrew Johnson
who was making a tour of New England and happened to be in New Haven;
came from behind with two runs in the ninth inning to win, 19 to 18;
and, still wearing their badges, had supper with their Yale opponents at
a New Haven hotel where the Yale players magnanimously sang ``Oh,
here's to Nassau Hall / For she's bully at baseball!''

More general and formal use of Princeton's colors came a year later. In
response to a petition from all four undergraduate classes, the Faculty
on October 12, 1868 resolved to permit students ``to adopt and wear as
the College Badge an orange colored Ribbon bearing upon it the word
`Princeton.''' Two weeks later at the inauguration of James McCosh as
eleventh president of the College, such badges, arranged for by the
Class of 1869, were much in evidence and the use of orange (with black
printing) became official.

The combination of orange and black was accidental and the two colors
were not associated in the undergraduates' minds until the fall of 1873
when a freshman named William Libbey, Jr. 1877, on a dare from his
classmate Melancthon W. Jacobus, sported a necktie made of yellow and
black silk which he had seen advertised in Cambridge, England, the
preceding summer, as ``The Duke of Nassau's colors.'' His wearing of the
necktie was used as evidence to prove Princeton's prior right to the
colors to a committee from Rutgers that had become interested in orange
and black. The following spring, Libbey arranged through his father, a
New York merchant, for the manufacture in a Paterson silk mill of a
thousand yards of orange and black ribbon for use at an intercollegiate
rowing regatta in Saratoga, N.Y., on July 15, 1874. He gave pieces of
the ribbon to members of the freshman crew for hatbands and sent the
remainder to a store in the Grand Union Hotel at Saratoga, three miles
from the lake where the races were rowed, to be sold as ``Princeton's
colors.'' When the Princeton freshmen won the first race, the Class of
1877 commissioned one of its members, who happened to have with him a
very fast trotting horse, to hurry to the hotel to buy up all the
ribbon, but by the time he arrived every inch had been sold.

Thereafter orange and black appeared in the attire of athletic teams and
in 1888 as the title of a song that soon won a place in Princeton lore.
In 1896, the year of the Sesquicentennial the trustees adopted orange
and black as the official colors for academic gowns despite a plea by
Professor Allan Marquand 1874 that Princeton's colors be changed to
orange and blue, which he had discovered were the true colors of the House of Nassau (and of the Netherlands whence New York City gets its
orange and blue). Professor Marquand made a strong case for his
proposal, on aesthetic as well as historical grounds, but by now too
much sentiment had been attached to the colors that had been in use for
several decades to permit giving them up. ``It matters not whether we
got them by accident or design,'' the feeling was said to run, ``We have
them, and will never change them, so long as eye and voice can unite in
praise of `dear old Princeton and the Orange and the Black.'''

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

It [Two And A Half Men] is now preceded by "The Crazy Ones," featuring the single most overrated actor in American history - Robin Williams.Actually, that's not quite true. Let's clarify that. The single most overrated comedic actor.Other than Mork from Ork, what role did Williams ever play that was
remotely funny? All he does is overact and try way too hard to be funny,
something he almost never accomplishes.You know when Williams was great? In "Good Will Hunting." And why? Because he wasn't trying to be funny.

Robin Williams is dead now. He apparently killed himself yesterday at the age of 63.

Though Williams wasn't quite TigerBlog's cup of tea as a performer, TB will still acknowledge that Williams had a long and wildly successful career. He won an Academy Award for "Good Will Hunting" and was nominated for his second-best performance in TB's eyes, that of the DJ in "Good Morning Vietnam." He would lose to Michael Douglas, whose portrayal of Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street" would have won pretty much any year.

Williams exploded into American comedy with a 1978 appearance on the show "Happy Days." If you never got to see "Happy Days," you missed out on something good - at least until Richie Cunningham grew up and decided to direct classic movies like "Apollo 13" and "A Beautiful Mind," for which he won an Academy Award. "A Beautiful Mind," of course, tells the story of Princeton's Nobel Prize-winning Economics professor John Nash and featured many scenes filmed on this campus - including some with Princeton athletes as extras.

"Happy Days" was the story of a regular family who lived in Milwaukee in the 1950s. It capitalized on the nostalgia craze and the success of the movie "American Graffiti," which was released in 1973, was set in 1962 and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, which it lost to "The Sting." In case you wanted a short list of people in "American Graffiti," it included Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams (Shirley, from "Laverne And Shirley), Suzanne Summers and even Wolfman Jack.

And Ron Howard, who played the main character on "Happy Days," Richie Cunningham, a student at Jefferson High School and later the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who lived at home with his parents Howard and Marian and sister Joanie (and older brother Chuck in the first season; he simply disappeared from the show after that). Oh, and there was the local mechanic who rented the apartment attached to the house, a mechanic named Arthur Fonzarelli, known to most as Fonzie or "The Fonz."

Anyway, on one episode, Richie encounters an alien from the planet Ork whose name was Mork, played by the young Robin Williams. His performance was so extreme for the time, so energetic, so original that he became an instant cultural phenomenon, his mannerisms mimicked and his signature "na-nu na-nu" greeting/distorted handshake part of the lexicon, as was his presumed curse word - "shazbat."

Williams' performance on that one show earned him a spin-off, "Mork and Mindy," that ran for five years. It also launched him on his career.

Maybe he tried too hard to replicate the energy and originality that was Mork. Whatever it was, his comedy always missed with TigerBlog.

It was when he wasn't trying so hard, like in "Good Will Hunting," where he plays the therapist to super-genius Matt Damon, that Williams could be extraordinary.

And now, at age 63, Williams has taken his own life.

TigerBlog has read how Williams suffered from depression, which makes the first question - what did he have to be depressed about? He had it all, didn't he? Fame. Wealth. All of it. He was the very top of the very top.

And he killed himself?

TigerBlog won't pretend to be anything remotely close to an expert on depression, though he does know people who suffer from the disease. And here's what he does know:

There is a huge difference between feeling depressed about the events of the day and suffering from clinical depression. They are not remotely the same thing.

Clinical depression is an illness, and it can afflict anyone. What they have, how much money they have, how good their life appears to be - these things don't make it any better.

And that's the problem. It's often impossible to know who is suffering, who is internalizing everything and hoping to get by each day, until it is too late.

TigerBlog is surrounded here by 1,000 Princeton athletes, young people who presumably have it all, who clearly have nothing to be depressed about.

But that doesn't mean that some of them aren't suffering from depression. Even scarier is that some of those who are probably don't realize it or realize it but don't seek out help for it.

They're Princeton students and high-level Division I athletes. They can handle it, right? They got this far.

But that's the scariest thought of all.

The University and Department of Athletics can't make this diagnosis. It can't look inside the minds of its athletes. All it can do is hope for that those who suffer seek treatment - and make sure they know such treatment is available.

And treatment is available. That's for sure. This University and its athletic department - like most, TB assumes - is ready to do almost anything for its athletes to ensure they get the help they need.

There have been headlines in the past of what can happen to those who appear to have the most to live for, the most going for them, if their depression gets the best of them.

It's awful to think about what could happen. Think it can't? Did anyone expect to get the news last night that Robin Williams of all people had killed himself?

TB just hopes Princeton's athletes - and anyone, really - asks for the help before it's too late.

Monday, August 11, 2014

TigerBlog has no idea what the impact of the Ed O'Bannon verdict means.

Oh, he's certainly read enough about it. Here's what he doesn't get:

* does this trust of $5,000 per year applies to every Division I football and men's basketball player

* how does the other major news last week that schools from the power five conferences can now make rules that would include the full cost of attendance impact the $5,000 trusts, since they were meant to cover the difference between full athletic scholarships and full cost of attendance

* what does it mean to every other sport

* what does it mean in terms of Title IX

Mostly TigerBlog is just dizzied by the changes in college athletics. It started with conference realignment and has continued in a huge way with the two events of last week.

And yet as the hurricane rages around him, TB sits in the eye - a world of stability and calm known as the Ivy League. There's something very refreshing about that.

When TigerBlog thinks of the name "O'Bannon," he thinks not of Ed but of Charles, and the night of March 14, 1996.

The place was Indianapolis, and the building was the RCA Dome. Indianapolis is still there. The Dome isn't. It was replaced by Lucas Oil Stadium a few years ago.

In case you haven't gotten the obvious yet, TigerBlog is talking about Princeton-UCLA in the opening round of the 1996 NCAA tournament. Princeton, five days after beating Penn in an Ivy playoff game on the night Pete Carril announced his retirement, defeated defending NCAA champ UCLA 43-41.

Even 18 years later, every detail of that trip to Indianapolis is still vivid to TigerBlog, from the travel to the dinners he ate to having to buy extra clothes at a mall because he didn't anticipate being there the entire weekend.

He remembers the media crush. He remembers the media room. He remembers when Vinnie DiCarlo, then an OAC intern, stole the sign that said "This is not a public entrance to the RCA Dome." He wonders if Vinnie still has that sign all these years later.

He remembers the people, the ones from Princeton who made the trip and the ones he met while there. He remembers calling around finding a place to update his game notes and how everyone he talked to was suddenly a Princeton fan.

Mostly, he remembers the end of the game itself.

Princeton trailed 7-0 at the first media timeout. At halftime it was a one-point game, 19-18.

The key moment of the game has been largely forgotten through the years, with everything else that happened at the end. No, this came with five minutes left and UCLA up 41-34, after Princeton had tied it 34-34. The Tigers then turned the ball over, and UCLA had Charles O'Bannon all alone ahead of the field.

The inevitable seemed to be a dunk, a nine-point UCLA lead, a Princeton timeout and basically the end of the ballgame. Instead, O'Bannon caught the length-of-the-court pass a hair closer to the basket than he thought he was, and he missed his layup.

Sydney Johnson then drained a long three at the other end. Instead of being down 43-34, it was 41-37. You know the rest.

Princeton tied it at 41-41. Cameron Dollar missed both ends of the two-and-the-ball after an intentional foul by Johnson. Kris Johnson left a leaner in the lane short, the rebound to Steve Goodrich.

And then, after a timeout, perhaps the single most iconic play in the entire history of Princeton Athletics, Goodrich to Gabe Lewullis for the game-winning layup. Then there was the seven-minute delay - TigerBlog was kneeling next to CBS' Andrea Joyce, who was waiting to grab Carril for TV, all while TB thought to himself how crushing this was going to be if UCLA pulled it out - for a reset of the game clock and two timeouts before Toby Bailey's airball ended it.

Princeton 43, UCLA 41.

Lost on TigerBlog in that moment was another number - 31,569. That was the attendance.

Two days later, Princeton lost to Mississippi State in the second round. The attendance that day was 32,293.

Looking back, maybe the ridiculous part is that it took this long for athletes to begin to get their share of the revenue that they are clearly helping to generate, from gaudy attendance numbers that are often more than three times the numbers Princeton drew in Indianapolis for college football to the unimaginable numbers that television brings to the table.

With that much money on the line, it's incredible that it took this long to get to the point that was, well, the point of last week's two decisions.

First, the major schools who are responsible for most of the revenue don't want to share it with the likes of Princeton and everyone else. Second, the athletes figure they're entitled to their cut.

The Ed O'Bannon lawsuit started after he saw his image used in a video game without his permission. It's about the money that individual athletes are generating themselves, with their likenesses, and how they weren't getting any of the money for them. Jerseys. Video games. Those sort of things.

TigerBlog prefers to reminisce about the night that Princeton beat UCLA, the Charles O'Bannon part of college athletics, rather than read any more about the lawsuit, the Ed O'Bannon part.

In college sports, they coexist, today more than they ever have. It's a miracle that this didn't happen decades ago, actually.

And the future?

TB isn't sure. Nobody is.

He just hopes that the Charles part doesn't get obliterated by the Ed part.

Friday, August 8, 2014

So last year, Team A had a home football schedule of Norfolk State, Eastern Michigan, Arkansas, Houston, Temple, Cincinnati and South Florida. Go back a year earlier, and it was Howard, UConn, Army, Syracuse, Kent State and Louisville.

This year?

Team A has a home football schedule of Howard, Penn State, Tulane, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana. You can throw in road trips to places like Ohio State, Michigan State, Nebraska and Maryland.

Time to step up to the plate, Rutgers.

The State University of New Jersey is as big a winner as there is the conference realignment game. Rutgers went from what was left of Big East football to the American Athletic Conference to the Big Ten.

As TigerBlog has said before, very few schools can say that they chased all the football money while also making the best possible decision for an academic purpose at the same time, but Rutgers definitely can. Other than the fact that the Big Ten used to be a strictly Midwest league, Rutgers is a perfect fit - a giant state university with strong academics and research.

Of course, if you're like TigerBlog's friend Corey, a Rutgers alum and loyal longtime football season ticket holder, then you are mostly interested in the fact that Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin are coming to the Banks of the Raritan.

For some reason, that makes TB think of the solicitations he gets from Penn for alumni donations, and they're always talking about how much the academic standing of the University has improved in the last few decades. They might as well say, TB supposes, that "the school is way too good now to take someone like you anymore," but he tries not to get offended.

Anyway, Rutgers went from rich, to richer to richest in a three-year span. Then, in one more day, it went to "so rich the rules no longer apply."

In case you missed it, the NCAA Board of Directors voted yesterday to allow the so-called "Power 5" conferences - the Pac-12, the Big Ten, the SEC, the ACC and the Big 12 - to essentially play by a different set of rules than the rest of Division I.

And by "different," TigerBlog means "more expensive." Way more expensive.

And not just expensive. The new rules mean there won't be any rules, or at least rules that apply to everyone else.

Well, that's not quite accurate.

And Five Conferences? Sounds a bit like "Five Families," no?

As TigerBlog understands it, the 65 schools in those five conferences can make rules that supersede NCAA rules in some areas but not all. And these rules apply to all sports, not just football, so all of the rules of Title IX still apply.

There are things that these schools cannot do. They cannot decide to practice for 40 hours a week or have their players not go to school or simply pay them to play.

They can give additional stipends well above what the NCAA currently allows, and they can also do all kinds of other things that don't really impact the basic model of college athletics - athletes who are also students - but dress it up in really extravagant ways that other schools can't afford.

The five conferences can't simply go off and start doing whatever they want. They have to create their own set of rules, agreed to by four of the five conferences. Once these rules are passed, the rest of Division I can vote to approve them as well if they wish; it's just that they'd never be able to afford to do them.

For instance, the five conferences can agree on a rule saying that they will pay for unlimited travel for their athletes between school and home. Or they will buy their athletes suits or other formal wear. Or they will have athlete-only dorms with round-the-clock unlimited food service, like on a cruise ship.

How does this affect Princeton? It doesn't. Not really. Princeton's main selling point will never be its athletic dorms.

The schools most affected will be the Mountain West type schools, or UConn, which is still in the AAC. Those schools will not be able to match the Power Five dollar for dollar, and TB can see recruits bailing on those schools in favor of all the accessories.

And of course, there is the movement to have the Power Five only play other Power Five schools in football, which would really impact scheduling.

The real reason that the rest of D-I is going along with this is because there's no alternative. The Power Five bring in more money than anyone could ever count, and they don't want Princeton and, to use yesterday's randomly chosen school again, Sacred Heart telling them how to spend it. If this didn't pass, those schools would have left the NCAA, destroying the model forever.

Anyway, TigerBlog isn't all that worried about it.

First because the Power Five are already the dominant schools anyway. Yeah, maybe it'll be harder for a Boise State to crack into that elite level, but oh well.

And second because it's another Friday in the summer, another week zoomed past.

Now here at Princeton there are just four short weeks until the first events of the next academic year. August is more than a quarter gone. NFL exhibition games have started.

And here is another summer Friday. This summer has been nearly devoid of uncomfortable heat and humidity, with almost no days in the 90s, as opposed to a normal summer, where there are endless days in the 90s.

The forecast for this weekend around here is 85 and sunny for both days, with a zero percent chance of rain.

So get a jump on the weekend. Go. Now. Get outside. Walk. Sit under a tree.

And get ice cream. Lots of it. A milkshake. Go to Carvel and get soft ice cream with the crunchies. Get one Saturday and the other Sunday.

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